Imagine going without food for three days. Pretty grim. Now imagine going with food for three days. Two marathon sessions of both classic and exotic Chinese dishes, made from the best ingredients and prepared by the finest chefs, for three days. Not as bad as starving, surely, but it would certainly be a test of your claim to loving Chinese food and eating out.

The  Manchu Han banquet is a rare Chinese culinary tradition born of a time when the Middle Kingdom still rested assured that it boasted the best and most abundant of everything. The reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi was a long and prosperous one. Much of his success came from the habit of promoting Han Chinese to high offices, breaking with the Manchu tradition of keeping all power for kinsmen. As you may know, there can't be official business in China without official banquets, and Kangxi soon found himself obliged to provide a banquet that would satisfy his culinarily more refined subjects.

Although the Manchu excelled at mounted warfare, they found their heaps of wheat buns and boiled venison no match for the cuisine of a people obsessed with food from time immemorial. Of course the Manchu's time in China had improved their menu, especially at the royal level. Kangxi took it upon himself to reflect the harmony, scope, and richness of the Qing Empire in one marathon meal that included all that fancy in both the Han and Manchu diets. This was the "Thousand Elders Banquet", held from March 25^th to 27^th, in honor of both Kangxi's 60^th birthday and all who had reached their seventh decade. A gourmet extravaganza, even by fussy imperial standards, the emperor showed great Sino-savvy by expressing his appreciation with calligraphy, brushing out four huge characters that read "Man Han Quan Xi". Thus was the tradition of the Manchu Han banquet born.

Historians reckon that close to three thousand people attended the banquet, and sampled more than three hundred dishes over those three days. Everything that walks, flies, swims, crawls or sprouts made it to those royal tables. And the fussiness over quality matched the variety. Of course bear paw was on the bill of fare, but not just any old grizzly mitt would do. Only the front paw of a black bear taken in autumn would serve, ensuring enough meat and fat to flake off the bone.  There were a myriad of pork dishes, but only from piglets weighing between 7.2 and 7.8 kilos, which had been fattened on sweet porridge for a week prior. Now that's the kind of exacting Epicureanism required of a great Oriental dynasty.

Time and increasing popularity broadened the range of viands served at Manchu Han banquets. Eventually, even offerings from outside races  inside the empire made it to the table, such as Tibetan and Mongolian dishes. But the evolution of the banquet got a lot more interesting than tsampa soufflé and mare milkshakes.  Both the omnivorousness of Guangzhou people and their love for exaggeration were displayed in the Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix dish, a combination of snake, cat, and chicken. Of course, the Guangzhou ren back up their claims with a lot of circumstantial evidence, in this dish's case fish maw,  shredded fungus, tangerine peel, Shaoxing wine, and chrysanthemum blossoms.

The location of a Manchu Han banquet determined which dishes received emphasis. In Xi'an, dumplings took center stage, stuffed with all manner of delicate combinations of meat and vegetable. Northeast banquets took a much greater interest in what could be done with mutton. The Sichuanese found new ways to stir-fry ingredients with too much chili pepper. By the time of Cixi , you could have eaten your way around China in one three-day meal, provided you got an invitation: the sour old goat eventually forbade the practice of Manchu Han banquets outside the royal palace.

Naturally though, given that these were imperial affairs, etiquette demanded more than rolling up your shirt and one pant leg, spitting on the floor, and getting down to business. No official robe and strand of 108 amber beads - no service. Washing faces and hands before and between courses was also mandatory. It only made sense to be as clean and shiny as the extravagant services gracing the table, miracles of polished silver chopsticks, crystal goblets, and fine china plates, to say nothing of the artistically rendered food. Sitting and conversing by rank were also mandatory, as were refined table manners, although nothing approaching the fastidiousness of the feudal Japanese.

Even a famished Chinese trencherman can't make it through three days of eating non-stop, however, and a variety of entertainments were made available to distract attention from one's tightening wasteband.  Leisurely fruit and wine courses would coincide with games of Chinese chess, poetry recitals, dancing girls, and firework displays. Therefore, it's best to think of these three day banquets not as endurance eating contests, but rather as extended bouts of self-indulgence, minus most of the naughty stuff the Romans got up to at their parties.

Today, some restaurants have the courage and disregard for profit margin to attempt the Man-Han feasts of old. Beijing's Fangshan restaurant, in the corner of Beihai Park, is such a place, although they usually limit their courses to under two hundred, and generally want  you out of there after a day or so. So pass many great traditions in the face of progress.